Molly Ivins February 16

BERKELEY, Calif. — Gosh, wow, the Dow Jones industrial average soared above 7,000 points last week. Golly, that's really something, isn't it? Even to the 80 percent of Americans who don't own any stock. Even to Americans affected by the fact that 93 percent of all the entitlement reductions made by the last Congress are in programs that help poor people in our nation.

Meanwhile, the Doug Jones average — the one that covers the rest of us (as in "How's ol' Doug doin'?") — is showing some downward indicators.

Imagine how proud I was to find Texas state Rep. Mike Krusee, Republican of Round Rock, bound and determined to cut food stamps to jobless adults who receive them only because they live in parts of Texas where the unemployment rate is at least 20 percent above the national average. Got to encourage those loafers to get out there and look for a job, y'know.

Then there's the charming move by state Rep. Burt Solomons, Republican of Carrollton, to make anyone who receives welfare pee in a cup. Solomon wants drug testing and criminal background checks on anyone so unfortunate as to wind up unemployed, although doing so would cost millions of dollars in an already shrunken public assistance budget. On the other hand, it would be good for plastic-cup stock.

Hey, we Texans live in a state that provides $188 a month for a family of three with no work; we've got to give these people some incentive to get off welfare. Nothing like $188 a month for a family of three to destroy your work ethic.

And what manner of citizens might we be talking about? Well, according to a story in The New York Times last week, farm workers who swing between Texas and Florida are having an unusually rough time this year because the freeze in Florida last month destroyed the winter vegetable crop. There's so little work that the migrants can't get gas money to go north looking for work, and now they're starting to get evicted and/or have their utilities cut off.

I wouldn't want to generalize about the work ethic of migrants, but I never heard anyone claim that theirs is easy work — especially anyone who's ever tried it.

True, some of the migrant workers are illegals from Mexico — who, as it happens, also pay U.S. taxes but are of course ineligible for any form of aid, so we don't have to worry about them.

Of course, not everyone is so silly as to have made migrant farm work their chosen field of endeavor. Some of us even become stockbrokers, a far cleverer thing to do when the Dow Jones is on its way to 10,000. But the Dow Jones has a peculiar way of making just about anyone into Doug Jones, Average Guy.

You may have noticed the recent merger announcement between Dean Witter — the sponsor of those heartwarming ads about how they do financial planning "one customer at a time" so we can all retire to our dream ranches or send our kids to college — and another Wall Street biggie, Morgan Stanley. Now, this is not expected to result in widespread layoffs, but some have said it could be the beginning of a series of Wall Street mergers that will result in downsizing.

Then, we have the GM-Hughes/Raytheon defense merger, which is not only a job-killer but also has that eye-popping tax loophole attached to it. GM nets $9.5 billion in cash and stocks on this one and pays zero taxes! Banc One is taking over First USA, and Hilton is trying to take over ITT. Have you considered the steadier job security in migrant farm work?

Then, there is the truly noteworthy effort to make life a little more unfair being pushed by Texas' only governor, Shrub Bush. Gov. Shrub himself described our state tax system as "inherently unequal and unfair" and then promptly proposed making it worse.

Citizens for Tax Justice in Washington, D.C., already say that Texas has "one of the 10 most regressive tax systems in the country." It's simple: The poor pay more. The current edition of The Texas Observer contains a handy bar chart by the Texas Center for Public Policy Priorities giving the details. The poorest fifth of Texans now pay 13.8 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the richest fifth pay 5.5 percent. Shrub's proposal to cut property taxes, on which our public schools depend, by $1 billion merely shifts the tax burden even more dramatically to the folks with the least money. Nice work, Shrub.

I know we're all happy for Dow Jones with this big 7,000 landmark. Wake me up when someone with power in this country does something that helps Doug Jones, would you?

***

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

COPYRIGHT 1997 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.